Marcus Reno

Marcus Albert Reno (15 November 1834-30 March 1889) was a Brigadier-General of the US Army during the American Civil War and Indian Wars. Reno had an unremarkable military career, being forced to spend two more years at West Point due to excessive demerits and repeatedly being reprimanded for his alcoholism. The cowardly Reno fled from the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876 after the scout Bloody Knife was shot next to him, and he would be court martialled for his alcoholism in 1880.

iography
Marcus Albert Reno was born on 15 November 1834 in Carrollton, Illinois, a descendant of a French immigrant named Phillippe Francois Renault, who had accompanied the Marquis de Lafayette to the United States in 1777 and had been given a land grant worth $400,000,000 in today's currency. In 1857, he graduated 20th in a class of 38 from West Point, and he fought at Antietam and Gettysburg before taking part in the Virginia campaign during the American Civil War. In December 1868, he was promoted to Major in the US Army, and he was the highest-ranking officer in the US 7th Cavalry Regiment serving under George Armstrong Custer at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. His scout Bloody Knife was shot through the head while talking to him about the location of the Sioux force, and Reno (whose face was covered in Bloody Knife's brains) fled in fear, setting a negative example for his troops. Reno would later be court-martialled for drunkeness, and he died of tongue cancer in 1889.